Traveling Technology, Feminist Biopolitics, and a Device for Not Performing Abortion

Michelle Murphy, University of Toronto

This paper tracks a simple plastic medical technology, which could safely and manually suction the contents of a uterus, as it circulated in the 1970s. In doing so, it situates U.S. Feminist Women's Health projects for "taking control of our bodies", forged in Los Angeles, as biopolitical projects directly animated by American imperial projects that sought cheap ways to control population growth in Bangladesh. The paper explores the implications of considering feminist health projects as entangled with larger biopolitical formations.